The Language of Ashdod

Learning Objectives

By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:

1. Explain what "the language of Ashdod" was and why Nehemiah grieved over it.
2. Show from Scripture that Bible words carry Bible ideas, and that abandoning the words endangers the ideas.
3. Identify common religious terms today that obscure or replace New Testament truth, and call Bible things by Bible names.

Thesis

When God's people borrow the world's religious vocabulary, they soon borrow the world's religious ideas; faithfulness therefore requires that we hold the pattern of sound words and call Bible things by Bible names.

Burden

This is a lesson about words, and someone will object that words are a small thing. But Nehemiah did not think so, and neither did the Holy Spirit who moved Paul to command us to "hold fast the form of sound words" (2 Tim. 1:13). Speech is the carrier of thought; change the carrier and you change the cargo. A generation that cannot speak the language of Canaan will not long hold the faith of Canaan. The burden of this lesson is that we guard our speech, not out of pedantry, but because the truth itself rides on the words.

Introduction

Language is the mode of communication; words are the signs of ideas. Where the words go, the ideas follow. In Nehemiah's day the returned exiles had married wives of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab, and their children spoke half in the speech of Ashdod and could not speak the language of God's people (Neh. 13:23-24). The mixing of tongues was the visible sign of a mixing of hearts. Boles takes this as a parable for the church: sound words, the corrupted speech of Ashdod, and the Ashdod language still spoken in religion today.

I. Sound Words (1 Tim. 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13)

1. "Sound words" are the words of Jesus — healthful words, words that convey full and rich ideas (1 Tim. 6:3, "the words of our Lord Jesus Christ... the doctrine which is according to godliness"). The word translated "sound" means healthy, wholesome.
2. We are commanded to hold the pattern of sound words (2 Tim. 1:13). There is a pattern; we are to stick to it; all our teaching should conform to it. God did not merely give us ideas to paraphrase as we please — He gave us words, and the words are a trust.

II. What Was the Language of Ashdod? (Neh. 13:23-24)

1. It grew out of a history of mixed marriages with the surrounding nations.
2. The children spoke half in the speech of Ashdod and could not speak the language of their fathers.
3. Speaking Ashdod, they could not express the ideas of the law of Moses.
4. They could not understand the law when it was read.
5. So they lost the ideas of God and took up the ideas of idolatry.

The progression is the warning: a borrowed language led to a lost law and finally to a lost God. Speech was the first thing to go and faith was the last.

III. The Language of Ashdod Spoken Today

Boles applies the parable to the religious speech of his own day — and ours. Where we exchange Bible words for the words of human religion, we begin to exchange Bible ideas for human ideas:

1. "Pastor" used for a single preacher, when in the New Testament "pastor" (shepherd) is one of the terms for an elder of the congregation (Eph. 4:11; Acts 20:17, 28; 1 Pet. 5:1-2).
2. "Reverend" applied to a man, when Scripture says, "holy and reverend is his name" — God's name (Ps. 111:9).
3. "Sacrament" for the Lord's Supper, importing ideas the New Testament does not teach about it (1 Cor. 11:23-26).
4. "Sabbath" used for the first day of the week, confusing the Lord's Day with the seventh-day Sabbath of the Law (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).
5. "Join the church" for what the New Testament calls being "added to the Lord" by the Lord Himself (Acts 2:41, 47).
6. "My church," "your church," "their church" for what is the Lord's church, which He purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28; Matt. 16:18).
7. "My denomination" — a concept and a word foreign to the New Testament, which knows only the one body (Eph. 4:4).
8. Religious titles — "Rabbi," "Father," "Master" — which Jesus forbade His disciples to take or give (Matt. 23:8-10).

In each case the issue is not mere fussiness over vocabulary; it is whether we will let the world's words quietly carry the world's ideas into the church.

Application

Hear yourself this week. The cure for the language of Ashdod is not arrogance about words but reverence for them. Call the church the Lord's church; call its overseers elders; call the first day the Lord's Day; speak of being added to the Lord rather than joining a society of men. This is not splitting hairs — it is keeping the pattern, so that the next generation can still speak, and therefore still understand, and therefore still hold, the faith. Teach your children the Bible's own words for Bible things, that they not grow up speaking half in the speech of Ashdod.

Conclusion

Nehemiah heard the children of his people lisping a foreign tongue and knew that the faith of their fathers was slipping away with the language. The same danger stands at our door. Hold fast the form of sound words. Speak where the Bible speaks; be silent where it is silent; and call Bible things by Bible names — for the words are the keeping-place of the truth.

Invitation

The gospel itself must be received in Bible terms. Scripture does not invite you to "join a church" of men but to be added by the Lord to His one church as you obey Him — believing in Jesus, repenting of sin, confessing His name, and being baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38, 41, 47). If you have never spoken that language of obedience, speak it today. If you are a Christian who has drifted into the speech and the thinking of the world, return to the pattern. Come as we sing.

Word Study

• "Sound" (1 Tim. 6:3, Gk. hygiainō): to be healthy, whole — the root of "hygiene." Sound doctrine is healthful doctrine; false words are diseased.
• "Form / pattern" (2 Tim. 1:13, Gk. hypotypōsis): an outline, a model to be copied. Inspired words are a template, not raw material to be reworded at will.
• "Reverend" (Ps. 111:9, Heb. nora'): to be feared, held in awe — applied to God alone in the verse Boles cites.

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